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The Agenda Behind Trump’s Sex-Crimes Cover-Up Industrial Complex
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s narrow win of the popular vote, he acted as if he had a sweeping mandate, far more sweeping than other mandates claimed in the past for more substantial wins. He announced a series of shocking cabinet appointments — unqualified and dangerous — and pressured congressional Republicans to adjourn so that he could make these appointments without congressional approval, essentially doing away with Congress’ vital role of government oversight.
Along with Trump himself, two top appointees — Matt Gaetz to be attorney general and Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense — are credibly accused of sex crimes, and Trump is seeking to have them installed in power without even the pretense of investigating them, let alone asking if they’re qualified for the positions they’re being appointed to. Trump is, in effect, asking House and Senate Republicans to join him in creating a sex crimes cover-up industrial complex.
But as outrageously immoral as this may be, it’s not the central story, as historian Timothy Snyder, author of On Tyranny, explained in a substack post, “Decapitation Strike”:
Imagine that you are a foreign leader who wishes to destroy the United States. How could you do so? The easiest way would be to get Americans to do the work themselves, to somehow induce Americans to undo their own health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence. From this perspective, Trump’s proposed appointments—Kennedy, Jr.; Gaetz; Musk; Ramaswamy; Hegseth; Gabbard—are perfect instruments. They combine narcissism, incompetence, corruption, sexual incontinence, personal vulnerability, dangerous convictions, and foreign influence as no group before them has done. These proposed appointments look like a decapitation strike: destroying the American government from the top, leaving the body politic to rot, and the rest of us to suffer.
In his post, Snyder concisely describes the mortal danger each of these appointments poses, starting with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the proposed head of the Department of Health and Human Services. “The foundation of a modern democratic state is a healthy, long-lived population. … Health is not only the central human good; it enables the peaceful interactions we associate with the rule of law and democracy,” and Kennedy “would undo all of this. On his watch, were his ideas implemented, millions of us would die.” More precisely, we might note, millions of children would die. The eradication of infectious childhood diseases through mass vaccination is one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century throughout most of the world. And Kennedy would eagerly burn that achievement to the ground.
Next, Snyder notes, “A modern democratic state depends upon the rule of law” which in turn “depends on people who believe in the spirit of law,” but “Matt Gaetz, the proposed attorney general, is the opposite of such a person. It is not just that he flouts the law himself, spectacularly and disgustingly. It is that he embodies lawlessness, and can be counted upon to abuse law to pursue Trump’s political opponents. The end of the rule of law is an essential component of a regime change.”
It’s also essential that laws be implemented by civil servants. “Without a civil service, the law becomes mere paper, and all that works is the personal connection to the government, which the oligarchs will have, and which the rest of us will not.” And that’s precisely the purpose behind appointing Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy “to head a black hole named after a cryptocurrency,” Snyder notes, referring to Trump’s proposed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. “There are already oversight instruments in government. DOGE is something entirely different: an agency of destruction, run by people who believe that government should exist for the wealthy or not at all.”
To illustrate Snyder’s point, Ramaswamy has suggested a neat trick to eliminate 3/4ths of the federal workforce: fire all workers whose Social Security number ends or begins with an odd number. It’s not just patently illegal, but utterly arbitrary and foolish, without even the appearance of rational analysis. It’s utterly destructive, nothing more or less.
The armed forces are meant to preserve and protect the people from external threats, but Trump “has presented the purpose of the armed forces as the oppression of Americans,” Snyder notes: “Trump says that Russia and China are less of a threat than ‘internal enemies,’” and he prefers “Hitler’s generals” — loyal to himself, rather than the Constitution. With this in mind, “Pete Hegseth, Trump’s proposed secretary of defense, defends war criminals and displays tattoos associated with white nationalism and Christian nationalism. He is a fundraiser and television personality, with a complicated sexual past and zero experience running an organization.”
In the postmodern world of hostile powers, “an intelligence service is indispensable,” even though it can certainly be abused. George W. Bush’s disdain for the warnings in advance of 9/11 is a clear reminder of that. One purpose of such services is to counter foreign disinformation intended to harm American society. But “Tulsi Gabbard, insofar as she is known at all, is known as a spreader of Syrian and Russian disinformation,” Snyder notes. “She has no relevant experience. Were she to become director of national intelligence, as Trump proposes, we would lose the trust of our allies, and lose contact with much of what is happening in the world — just for starters. We would be vulnerable to all of those who wish to cause us harm.”
This is just a short summary of what Trump’s initial high-level appointments portend. On one level, it’s not that Trump intentionally wants to destroy America. He is simply indifferent. It’s all about him, and nothing else. But since America stands in his way, he does intentionally want to destroy it after all.
He fits the pattern of what the political scientist Juan Linz described as a leader in a “sultanistic regime,” an authoritarian regime “based on personal ideology and personal favor to maintain the autocrat in power” with “little ideological basis for the rule except personal power.”
It goes without saying that sultanistic regimes are anti-democratic, even though many of them still maintain elections — sometimes winning 90% of the vote or more. So don’t be confused by surface appearances as this or that political actor tries to pretend that what’s unfolding is somehow perfectly normal, perfectly democratic, and perfectly legal in every way. Snyder is right. What we are witnessing now is a decapitation strike — as direct an attack on American democracy as any ever seen in our history. The attempted sex crimes coverups may be the most obvious front to fight back on. But they are only a symptom of the more fundamental threat. Trump is not a king, no matter what his lackeys — from the Supreme Court on down — want you to believe. We are still a democracy. And the things Trump wants to do are not only fundamentally destructive to America, but they’re also highly unpopular, once they come into focus. Which they are only now starting to do.
